Barbed Wire vs. High Tensile Electric

[RobertMac]

Silver, the strongest fence is the one with something for the cows to eat inside it. If cattle are biting dirt to get something to eat, you are going to have problems keeping them in with any fence. I know you know this.
Unless you have a road on the other side or don't want the calves on the other side, a single strand of waist high should work fine.

When people ask me how strong is that electric fence, I tell them to get on their hands and knees, wet their nose, and touch it to the fence.

 

[Grassfarmer]

Two high tensile electrified wires will be more than enough. Will you have bulls on the different sides at the same time? If you won't I would suggest you could get by with a single wire but the savings wouldn't be great as you already have the posts in place and wire only runs around $85 a 4000' roll. Don't mix electric and barb that's a horrible combination. What happens is a deer will come along, get it's foot between the wires and twist the electric onto the barb and your fence is shorted out. He have this problem often with an electric wire on offsets out from a 4 strand barb. Nothing pulls down the power like having it earthed onto 1/4 mile of 4 strand barb.